Smile Like You Mean It
by Cozzybob
Summary: Duo tells all in the history of L2, his life, and how he changed himself for the better after the wars were finally over. drabble, gen


**Smile Like You Mean It**  
by Cozzybob

**Archived: **On FFN and Kiyasama's Project Greenlight Fanfiction website all under cozzybob. If you like, you want, you ask, I'll say yes. ; Just tell me so that I can babble and put you up here. Please. (I'm a glory hog--I need my glory.)

**Disclaimer: **If it's recognizable at all, the universe of Gundam Wing and it's characters belong to Sunrise and other shareholders. Not me. I did not make any money borrowing them and do not plan to do so in the future. This, like all other fanfiction, was written for sheer pleasure alone. Plot, if it deserves the name, belongs to me.

**Rated: **PG-13

**Pair: **none

**Warning: **completely introspective (as in no real dialogue), braid-cutting, umm... stuff? Nothing major. Various mentions of random death, though not in a highly angsty kind of way (surprisingly).

**Note: **For Merith's request in the ficondemand community on livejournal.

* * *

When life bites you in the ass, you gotta bite back and enjoy the flavor. A kid told me that once, a few breaths or so before he died. He meant it too, though I couldn't tell you why he told me it or how it affected our relationship... we weren't close friends by any means, he was just someone that I knew by chance in the overly twisted thing that just so happens be my life. Or Duo Maxwell's life, anyway.

But yeah, I think it means what it says. You have to take everything in stride and just stay positive. There's no room in this world for negative people--and god, how I _loathe_ negative people--so don't even bother trying. Just smile, take the punches, get your slice out of life (or revenge, may that be the case) and then move on. That's it. It's really not that hard, and especially not as hard as the drama queens make it out to be. Believe me, I know what's hard and what's not.

Living just ain't that bad... when you're me.

I know you wouldn't believe me if you knew where I came from and what I did in my yonder years, but you don't and you never will (since no one really knows what happened to begin with), and it doesn't matter. The point is that I'm a very positive person and I'm happy with the way things are, past or no past. I am free to live my life, and so I do.

That's just who I am.

Free.

I know. You say, "Duo, you came from the armpit of the universe, how _dare_ you say you were free?"

But then I just smirk and shrug and say, "I suppose it's in my blood," and of course you'll look at me the way they all do and just totally not understand it. Not that anyone, in any part of the universe, has ever understood it. Not me. I'm not made to be understood, after all.

I'm American, colony born or not, and I'm descended from ax murderers, rapists, child molesters and boogeymen paradise. The L2 colony I came from was built not as a place for tourism, but as a prison for _really bad people_. There are several L2 colonies and yes, some of them are very nice, but this one wasn't exactly on the main menu at Broadway. Everyone knows that. It's a dump. A very _very_ secure dump, back in the war. It was bad. Extremely.

Not that I cared, of course, but you understand, don't you?

Everyone on that colony--innocent or not--knows it what it's like to exist behind metal bars. I mean, you wouldn't believe the kind of people I grew up with, and you wouldn't believe what I did with said people you wouldn't believe, and hell, you wouldn't believe what _I_ did under my _own_ influence, despite the age that I just so happened to be... but it was just like that. And anyway, as I was saying, I came from some really nasty people and these people were taken onto the colony in chains, where they were then secured in maximum security prisons. They paced their cells twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty five days a year including leap years, and as it happened, no one ever really visited them because who is going to travel all the way from a nice pretty Earth city to an ugly hunk of metal in the middle of space?

Exactly.

They got bored pretty fast. (And if they're related to me, that's _very_ fast.)

On AC76, March... eighth, I believe, which was a Wednesday, the prisoners of Bush Institutional rioted and broke free of their bonds to flood the somewhat desolate streets of quiet little prison-camp L2. They killed three hundred ninety seven guards (there were a lot of guards) and freed a neighboring prison on their way to glory, which also freed another neighbor until every prison on L2 was unleashed and the streets were jam packed with "blood thirsty animals." The convicts let the guards and any innocent bystanders escape on emergency shuttles while they flooded into bars and local grocery stores to have real food and real fun that did not involve the glop of white paste they'd suffered for so long.

They freed themselves, and they seized the colony for their own. They stole their freedom--a thing that despite the history of their country and all the lineage they had been born from... they did not truly know before.

There's more to that story--much, much more--but the point here is that these prisoners (aka the _really bad people_) fought for their freedom to take life by the horns and live. They were the people that discovered what it meant to really be free, to own their own lives, and that's why I say that I am what I am and I was born free and that's the way I'll die.

That's the way I'll always be, and damnit, that's just who I am.

I have the freedom to smile when I want to. So I do. Get it?

Good.

Now moving on, I should really get into the point of this whole thing, and that's to tell you just how I exercised this right, this... will to live. I changed myself after the war. I made a new me. I moved on. I did things.

What did I do, you ask?

First, I should say that I don't wear black anymore. I know you think this isn't a big deal, and even if you do know me, you would say, "They were just clothes," but they weren't and we all know that. Even OZ knew that. Err, well... maybe especially OZ, but that's not the point.

After the war, I burned my priest's habit and just about all of the black clothes in my wardrobe. Black is a sign of mourning, you see, and I--being me--just wanted to move on. I wasn't going mourn anymore, you get it? It was over. It was done.

I had a huge bonfire and just tossed it all in like some half-cocked pyromaniac. People thought I was crazy--and I probably was since we all know that I _am_--but I didn't care, I burned everything.

These days I wear white. Well... white with color. Sometimes I will wear black admittedly again too, but that's mostly on the occasion that it goes well with said color or the white that I'm already wearing. I don't hide anymore, I don't see the point now that the war is over, and I have no one left to hide from, you know?

So that's one thing I did, among the masses.

That wasn't the _worst_ thing I did after the war... heh...

No, I... well... I cut my hair. Now, now don't panic! I can already hear your screams, I know, but please, don't you think it was time? That braid has been my personal bane against everything that was wrong with the world for years, and if I'm going to move on, I'm going to move on from everything, and so I did it. I cut my hair.

It's shoulder length now, and it stays that way. I don't put it up, I don't braid what's left of it, I don't do anything except comb it. It fits me, it works, and god, it's so much easier to manage. It works. It's actually _me_ for a change, and not the thing that I was trying to pretend to be. I like it. I mean, I finally grew up, I finally cut my hair, I _finally_ became a man, and god, it feels so good... You have no idea. Really, you don't.

I don't even understand it. But I like it this way.

Hm. And anyway, you want to know another thing that I did (though still not the worst)? I got a job. For me. On my own, away from everybody. I even have my own apartment and a dog, supported by said job. It's nothing much--just working at this local small-town recording studio--but it's fun, and they tell me that I've got the personality to host my own radio show... which I'm strongly considering. It will mean that I'll have to party at kickass concerts all night and bullshit all day, but I could handle it just fine being the twenty-seven year old that I am... right?

Right. It's the best job in the entire freaking world, and I love it.

Yeah, I know, so what's the worst, you ask? What's the worst thing I did after the war was over and decided to move on and to take this advice this kid had given me, this carpe diem styled bull seriously?

I found my birth name. My birth _certificate_. My parents.

Hell... did you know that I have a sister?

And her name is none other than... well... let's just say you and I both know her and it's a _damn_ good thing I didn't make moves when I wanted to.

And no, I'm not kidding.

I don't think you'd recognize me if you saw me now compared to what I was then, but I guess that's a good thing because I'm not too keen on what I was then anyway. I'm better now, and this is my life as I live it.

It's not perfect--at all--but it's good. Good enough... and that's just fine for me.

--_Fini_


End file.
